How can they possibly destroy someone's private property? The worst they could do is escort owner, and the phone, from the premises.
Raytheon is a defense contractor. If you go to the wrong secure sites under the wrong circumstances, destroying your phone might be the least of your worries. They could destroy *you*. This is national security we are talking about here. Your property is not so important in that context.
Besides, they confiscate/destroy people's personal property at the airport every day when it does not meet their security guidelines. You chose to bring these things to an area where they would be destroyed if they were brought there; you chose to have them destroyed.
I have not refused to provide anything. Of course I can give citation for what I am talking about. Can you? Seriously everything you have said ths far about this subject seems to display a profound ignorance. You also do not give any evidence to support your claims that record companies give fair contracts. The artists seem to disagree with you.
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was sued by his previous label for subsequent songs that sounded like his previous work according to that label. His countersuit is here.
In this case, the copyrights to the songs belonged to the label and playing the originals did indeed require permission from the prior label (and payment of royalties). In addition, as was shown, they expected that if he made any future songs it must be with permission and paying the former label. Granted this is only one example of a very bad contract that led to decades of legal battles, but there are many others.
As for artists no longer owning rights to theri own name, Prince and George Michael come to mind, but there were a lot of others who could not use their name for anything because thier name belonged to the record label. How did other artists switch labels? They did not sign away rights to their name.
As for the RIAA bots, they are there. The RIAA has spiders that search for MP3s on the net. hey then sue people for distributing them and order their ISPs to shut down that person's internet conection. They do not check to see if they actually own the rights to the MP3s before doing this and have indeed cut off people for distributing their own MP3s. They have pushed for royalties to be paid to them by webcasters even if they only play music from labels which are independant of the RIAA. IN short they are claiming work that is not their own, which should not be surprising since it is their business (although it is a bit annoying that they claim all the music in the world regardless of whether the artist signs a contract with them).
Anyhow, just because the economy's getting better in a lot of places doesn't mean that we're quite there to the point where anyone who does something valuable and is very good at what they do is employed -- but then, we're certainly getting back there.
I agree wholeheartedly. Personally, I am anticipating a new boom in this space much larger even than the 90's boom, hopefully minus the companies with no plan except to steal VC money. But there are a lot of talented unemployed people right now. However, I was countering the contention that all OSS developers are unemployed in their mama's basement and that they are not paid. And I do know a lot of OSS developers all of whom have been employed throughout the trough in the economy (and indeed switched jobs a few times in that period).
It is a lie that OSS will put developers out of work. To the contrary I see OSS as making more work for developers than proprietary software does, and making it easier for them to do their work. OSS gives companies options with their software that they use which they would not have wth proprietary software, such as customization, which ultimately translates directly into more work for developers.
The main threat OSS has is to vendors whose code is such shit they are afraid for people to see it, and software companies who make something very simple and want to charge lots of money under onerous licenses for it. Funny that from the beginning Microsoft has been the greatest opponent of OSS; then again they started the cry against piracy over their crappy implementation of basic on a punch tape ($500US per copy!).
The person you are responding to is indeed a troll. YHBT HAND. Check out the other posts from them, and that website. It was actually a pretty complete troll, and they troll a lot. It's one of those troll personas trolls create so that they can troll more effectively.
But I'm not very optimistic at Google increasing profit on a constant basis. Yes, they're doing well and I think they can continue to do well. But if they are seeing profits of $150m/year, then anything over about $5 billion market cap is just out of line. There's not a whole lot of growth available to them short of changing their service so much that it becomes less attractive to Internet users. And if it's not about growth then I need to see dividends that make my investment worthwhile. If they have over about $5 billion market cap then I'd be better off investing in a savings account.
You seem to assume that their website is their only source of revenue. This is not the case. They provide a variety of products and services, including licensing their search engine code, selling search appliances, and more. Heck, it seems that Yahoo is using Google's engine now, and so are a lot of others, because it is the best. This is why they are going to grow in revenue like crazy! IANASB, YMMV.
I think not. These shares are indoubtably going through the roof, so they'll be way too expensive for me. I mean, Google is supposed to be worth about 15 - 20 billion!
Muahahaha. IT looks like they are pissing off the banks who wanted to make a killing off this fat IPO. Look at the jealousy!
"They could get a $100bn" stock market value, said one person involved.
"However, all the shares would end up with Aunt Agatha in Des Moines and Uncle Milt in Pittsburgh and there would be no real public market at all."
Okay, so they are mad the shares might actually get owned by ordinary people instead of investment brokerages/banks, and they dare to claim this means no *public* market? What is their definition of people? The same as Stalin's definition of People? (as in Enemy of the People, Property of the People, etc)...
Oh but the juiciest bit is who this comes from:
Frank Quattrone, the star investment banker who controlled many of the dotcom stock allocations, is awaiting the verdict in a trial that sprang out of the scandals.
He was accused of destroying evidence to hamper an investigation into the affair.
Google, do your IPO on ebay and really piss them off! Support the.com economy!:)
However, gravity is, in fact, a very important assistant in many pens. If you try writing on a vertical surface or on the underside of a horizontal surface, you will discover this pretty soon. A bubble will not usually form, but the ink-air interface moves back to a new potential minimum that is behind the ball. This is because, in a conventional pen, the full potential for the system includes the action of gravity on the column of ink as well as the action of the surface tension on the ink-air interface.
Writing upside-down is of course more strenuous than any writing you can do when in free fall. But it is really quite amusing for this ignorant fellow to claim that gravity is not an important factor when using a pen, when it obviously is.
Are you sure the phenomena you describe are not caused by gravity acting against the ink? IN other words, a ballpoint on earth will not write upside down because gravity pulls the ink away form the ball, not because gravity is no longer pulling the ink to the ball. The aforementioned astronaut seems to have proven your theory incorrect.
First, as an example, look at any RIAA affiliated CD you own that has the lyric sheet. You will see "lyrics reprinted by permission" or some such. This is because the band is giving the record company permission to reprint the lyrics.
The reason they can give permission is because the band, not the record company, owns the lyrics. Not to mention the score, i.e. they own the song. Not the record company.
You'll also see things like "songs published by ", and that company you never heard of is actually a legal entity of some sort (maybe a partnership, maybe an actual corporation) that is made up of one or more members of the band.
The RIAA companies don't sign bands to give them songs, they sign them to recording contracts -- i.e., they pay the band for their recordings.
Now, the only thing stopping a band from re-recording those songs is that the record company may (probably does) have a clause that says "you can't release recordings through any other company or through yourself for the duration of this contract".
So if a band is in a 3 year deal, they're stuck with that company. If the company drops them, or their contract expires, while they may not have the rights to the original recordings, they have the rights to the songs, so nothing is stopping them from re-recording.
So... if a band signed to a RIAA company releases an album and it flops, and the company drops them, there is no reason they can't just re-record the songs and release the "new" album.
Sorry, but you are completely wrong. First off it is an oversimplification to expect all recording contracts to be the same. But ultimately, most of them indeed include a signing away of all rights for any songs produced, plus future songs, plus the artists name, and anything else Mr Record Executive can think of.
Artists have even been sued later for making songs that sounded like they were the same style as the kind of songs they used to sing for a record label.
Essentially, if you sign with a label, they own you, your soul, and everything you will ever be. If you are lucky, you might get a small advance with that. Most artists, of course are not even "lucky' enough to sign a record deal. But if they dare to distribute MP3's of their own work, not having signed a deal with any record label, the RIAA bots attack them and their fans and sue them into oblivion.
The Disney-inspired copyright laws and the RIAA/MPAA deathmarch, along with DRM, are an attack on the actual creators of content by middlemen who wish to continue to control the means of distribution and to reap the lion's share of the profits. They can't have the actual artists and the actual customers interacting in a way in which neither gets screwed, it would destroy their business model.
I understand where the confusion comes up - it's because most people get both car and driver insurance from the same company, under the same "policy". But they're really very, very different things.
But the poster was merely giving an example of the floor. Yes, liability insurance is not avoided no matter what. But that does not take care of the driver or the car if there is an accident.
By the time you get to that, the bill could be several times the aformentioned sum. And even if there was an accident, the insurance company will only give you at maximum a fraction of the "worth" of the car. So paying $2-3000 on insurance each year is insane on a $500 car. Is paying $1200 in liability coverage somehow less insane because you pay the same amount on any car and it is your Obligation as a Good Citizen? Hell no!
Firstly, I have found that even full coverage insurance is the same cost on a $40,000 car as it is on a $400 car. Of course it is absurd in the case of the latter. But even if we are only discussing liability we are talking about an outlay of cash for maintenance of the privilege of driving. If you can pay the sam eammount each month and drive a $40,000 car why are you driving the $400 car? Because you don't want to owe $40,000+interest? for many this is not compelling enough a reason.
In summary, the cost of liability insurance, the cost of the car, the cost of the gas, the cost of the maintenance and repairs all go into the calculation of how much this mode of transportation cost, and in many cases because of insurance costs it becomes insane to drive a "cheap" car.
Um they did offer such a tool to fix the problem easily but customers still didn't run it and just called to bitch about the popups even though they were told to run it but they still didn't do it. Damn lazy people.
It always amazed me but people will indeed call and wait on hold 30 minutes just to complain for another 15 about something that happened because they did not do the 5 second task they were assigned when they called the last time (or were otherwise notified about). What's even more outstanding is that they will do this again and again.
Even better are the people who complain about something wrong with a program, but there is a patch for the problem, but they don't install it. They will complain repeatedly that the program does not work right, and be told repeatedly that they need to apply the patch, and told how to apply the patch, but they will refuse to do it and yet want to complain more about the problem instead. Some people are just whiners!
Um, no. Business licenses in the US are mostly local (city) government things to gather some tax revenue.
I see you got your MBA in Community College. Let me give you a clue. City governments do not grant corporations. AOL is a corporation.
That said, no matter what the business type there are recourses wen they act illegally. Unfortunately in this country government turns a blind eye to the malfeasance of large corporations.
What you said about ISPs is correct, but not just anyone could set one up. It would require some technical knowlege and startup capital, but otherwise yes.
Would you prefer that it be described as a worm or a trojan? Take your pick, either can be justified. Now tell me why getting a worm (trojan) to run on your computer without telling you isn't hacking your computer.
In fact, isn't there currently a kid in jail for modifying the msblaster worm to fix the vulnerabilities it exploits? Even if not, the FBI is looking for that guy. Face it, if individua;s hack computers or pass out trojans and worms, it is a crime. But if a corporation does it, it's just business.:(
However I feel the original author left out one important part of a MMORPGs "hook" to me:
Exploration
If I really am "entering a world" I want to feel like I am. I felt that way in early EQ. And to those who have posted, "How different can a graphical MUD be from one that isn't graphical?" The answer is much different, we are largely visual people (come on guys, you know that is true;) ) and adding "eye candy" is an immediate hit.
What's even better is adding eye candy that is an intriguing landscape, where you can feel like you are possibly the first person ever to have come to this exact corner, to see this exact view. That is an easy hit MMORPGs can give us.
Exploring a world without having to slay Dragon 1 2 and 3 just to enter the area, is also something a casual player can do. Perhaps I'm biased because I do things like this in real life, but I was thrilled to appear to be able to ascend the "mountains" in DAoC instead of hitting my head on the "world's ceiling" as in EQ.
Give me the mountains, the tiny little nooks in caves in which I find a quiet rest spot, and I'll go there to take a break from the leveling grind, perhaps it might even entice people to:: gasp:: roleplay more.
If you'd like to see my take on the MMORPGs I saw at this year's E3, see my article: Building a Better Mousetrap.
I have to agree with you. I think one of the main reasons I started playing Everquest and later DAOC was the scenery and music. In both games I enjoyed travelling the landscape even at low levels much more than fighting. It was also a challenge to go through areas where fighting would get you killed just to see something cool. I was recently trying to get a beginning character to stonehenge in daoc (which, for the uninitiated, is a high-level dungeon in the daoc world with high-level monsters roaming and guarding the whole Salisbury Plain). And who could forget the Naked Gnome race on everquest where the challenge was to create a new Gnome character and with no armor or weapons race from one end of the world (where gnomes live) to the other? That was a neat idea and very inspirational to me.
I find it is very interesting how people act in these games compared to real life. I enjoy scenery in real life and would love to climb mountains. But most of the people in the game are just concerned with levelling. I was playing with a friend and I was telling him "check out that sunset!" But he was more concerned with his experience bar!:P
It sounds like this guy doesn't like MMORPGs. Why does he keep playing them?
'Doctor! It hurts when I do this!' 'Well don't do that.'
Sheesh. Play something else.
Because he likes RPGs, SCIFi, Fantasy, and computer games, that is why. You would think a MMORPG would be the answer to such a person's prayers, but it is not. You know, I think a major reason this doens't work as well is that most adventure games normally have a good solid story, but most MORPGs do not. Paper and dice RPGs rely on a GM who creates a decent story and interaction with likable humans (likable by *you* the RPG player). Successful MUDs have historically had elements of both (and even when the stories sucked, people came back if they wanted to talk to others who were in that game).
Actually, I have noticed that DAOC is soliciting suggestions from players both for quests and for game development. There is a very good line of communication between the developers and the players because they know it is about the community. We will see how things work out for them. Then again, the problems of the levelling system are definitely there.
Dear God, you lead a charmed life. Any tips on finding career paths like that? I'm sure a lot of OSS advocates want to know.
I do not know a single open source developer who has had trouble finding work even in the previous bad economy. I do know plenty of admin and support types having problems. I know a lot of open source developers and they are actually in good demand to work with the products they like; the poster's career path actually sounded pretty typical to me.
Right now OSS is in its main stream infancy. It's all roses and love and happiness.
That is likewise a myth. Software began as open source and was shared. It is proprietary software that is the new model, and companies are switching back to open source because of the problems inherent in that model. Even in proprietary software, code sharing occurs at some level between areas of companies, companies collaborating, and even customers, and it is known that this is a good thing and why by anyone who actually works on the software.
The more the code is shared, the more bugs can be fixed. The more bugs are fixed, the better the software becomes. It is that simple. Having multiple repositories as is the case with backups and escrow with proprietary software or the normal course of doing business with open source software, is likewise good because you have methods for disaster recovery. This article describes a case where the need for such methods was blindingly, painfully obvious.
the only things he excelled in was comedies, but he tried only for serious roles. Robin Williams almost suffered the same fate until someone told him he was much to funny for the serious roles.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to recognize that politicians are just people. They are reptiles in humanoid form, perhaps.
This isn't meant to be taken seriously, of course, politicians are just not deserving of much respect in my book.
Which is why I think the new television show Skin has such an awesome premise (don't know that it will be any good, unfortunately). Politician's son dates pornographer's daughter, and each of the dads is trying to break up the relationship on the premise that the other dad is too much of a slimeball to be associated with!:)
No, it was Digital Equipment Corp. Windows NT is based on VMS. Digital was bought by Compaq which was in turn bought by HP. David Cutler, the chief architect of VMS, was hired by Microsoft to help develop NT.
BTW, WNT is to VMS what IBM is to HAL.
This is true in that, according to Microsoft History, they hired away DEC's development team for VMS and asked them to make NT for them, starting with the lead developer and then telling him he had full control over who was in his team and what they were doing so long as he comes out with a new OS. But perhaps the other poster was referring to the OS2 debacle.
Microsoft was working with IBM on OS/2 wen they started working on NT. They ended up abruptly ditching the project and then attacking OS/2 in the marketplace. A lot of the OS/2 technology that was developed in the joint project between Microsoft and IBM ended up in Windows NT and IIRC the Win95 line as well (and of course by extension of NT, it is in 2000 and XP).
It was similar to the Monterrey project SCO is whining about, except that in this case MS was being quite a bit nastier. I think SCo was trying to make the comparison between OS/2 vs NT and UNIX vs Linux. At any rate apparently Microsoft felt their half was their property and they could use it, and as far as I know IBM chose to fight them in the marketplace instead of in court. The rest, as they say, is history.
And so, here we are. But I assure you, if IBM were to capitulate and offer SCO the buyout, SCO would take it, because a buyout is what they've wanted all along..
Darl has claimed publicly that a buyout is no longer an option, but then he has claimed a lot of things publicly I hear:)...
I've never understood why all of the normal foreign films, like all the french ones, are sub-titled, and people here love it, yet for some reason they always insist on dubbing the anime. Now, the vast majority of SERIOUS anime fans (myself included) HATE dubs, and refuse to collect anything but sub-titled anime. I wonder why they refuse to sub-title the good stuff, especially Porco Rosso, which is quite an excellent movie. Just once I'd love for them to do a good sub-titling job, and release it in the states, and have it be wildly successful to show that people really do enjoy the subs. Oh well, least I still have my fansubs and I won't have to deal with all this dubbing nonsense.
I hate dubbing as well, mainly because they pick terrible voice actors for the parts. Now Patrick Stewart is no slouch for voice acting, and all slashdotters love Natalie Portman, but for me there is no substitute for the real thing when it comes to foreign films, especially Japanese ones.
I wish that more Japanese video games retained the voicing as well. It is frustrating because usually if you want to hear the original Japanese, you have to get the Japanese version which is of course not subtitled and uses Japanese menus.
I was recently playing the US PS2 version of "Way of the Samurai" and I noticed that they had retained the grunts and cries of the original voice actors, but the speech was mute (there was text). I thought it was awfully tantalizing to have all those Japanese voice actors but only be able to hear the emphatics. It wuld have been nice to have them actually speaking.
Tenchu 2 (or was it 3) finally caught onto this and allowed the speech to be configured seperately from the subtitling. That is especially good because Tenchu's US speech was terrible, even featuring stereotypical broken english speaking characters for extra infamy!:P
Did you somehow not even RTF summary and notice the bit where it says not to bother posting exactly what you said?
First off, slashdotters as a rule do not rtfa or even the whole submission. They don't click on links other than the headlines and reply, generally, an dthat includes article links.
Secondly, how dare they declare a tired old obscure nerdy joke vernoten on slashdot! What are they going to do? Seize our boxen?! I'll have you know that in Soviet Russia, all your first post penis bird natalie portman are belong to us, and they're worried about nausican stabbings?
Slashdot Mirror
How can they possibly destroy someone's private property? The worst they could do is escort owner, and the phone, from the premises.
Raytheon is a defense contractor. If you go to the wrong secure sites under the wrong circumstances, destroying your phone might be the least of your worries. They could destroy *you*. This is national security we are talking about here. Your property is not so important in that context.
Besides, they confiscate/destroy people's personal property at the airport every day when it does not meet their security guidelines. You chose to bring these things to an area where they would be destroyed if they were brought there; you chose to have them destroyed.
I have not refused to provide anything. Of course I can give citation for what I am talking about. Can you? Seriously everything you have said ths far about this subject seems to display a profound ignorance. You also do not give any evidence to support your claims that record companies give fair contracts. The artists seem to disagree with you.
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was sued by his previous label for subsequent songs that sounded like his previous work according to that label. His countersuit is here.
In this case, the copyrights to the songs belonged to the label and playing the originals did indeed require permission from the prior label (and payment of royalties). In addition, as was shown, they expected that if he made any future songs it must be with permission and paying the former label. Granted this is only one example of a very bad contract that led to decades of legal battles, but there are many others.
As for artists no longer owning rights to theri own name, Prince and George Michael come to mind, but there were a lot of others who could not use their name for anything because thier name belonged to the record label. How did other artists switch labels? They did not sign away rights to their name.
As for the RIAA bots, they are there. The RIAA has spiders that search for MP3s on the net. hey then sue people for distributing them and order their ISPs to shut down that person's internet conection. They do not check to see if they actually own the rights to the MP3s before doing this and have indeed cut off people for distributing their own MP3s. They have pushed for royalties to be paid to them by webcasters even if they only play music from labels which are independant of the RIAA. IN short they are claiming work that is not their own, which should not be surprising since it is their business (although it is a bit annoying that they claim all the music in the world regardless of whether the artist signs a contract with them).
Anyhow, just because the economy's getting better in a lot of places doesn't mean that we're quite there to the point where anyone who does something valuable and is very good at what they do is employed -- but then, we're certainly getting back there.
I agree wholeheartedly. Personally, I am anticipating a new boom in this space much larger even than the 90's boom, hopefully minus the companies with no plan except to steal VC money. But there are a lot of talented unemployed people right now. However, I was countering the contention that all OSS developers are unemployed in their mama's basement and that they are not paid. And I do know a lot of OSS developers all of whom have been employed throughout the trough in the economy (and indeed switched jobs a few times in that period).
It is a lie that OSS will put developers out of work. To the contrary I see OSS as making more work for developers than proprietary software does, and making it easier for them to do their work. OSS gives companies options with their software that they use which they would not have wth proprietary software, such as customization, which ultimately translates directly into more work for developers.
The main threat OSS has is to vendors whose code is such shit they are afraid for people to see it, and software companies who make something very simple and want to charge lots of money under onerous licenses for it. Funny that from the beginning Microsoft has been the greatest opponent of OSS; then again they started the cry against piracy over their crappy implementation of basic on a punch tape ($500US per copy!).
The person you are responding to is indeed a troll. YHBT HAND. Check out the other posts from them, and that website. It was actually a pretty complete troll, and they troll a lot. It's one of those troll personas trolls create so that they can troll more effectively.
But I'm not very optimistic at Google increasing profit on a constant basis. Yes, they're doing well and I think they can continue to do well. But if they are seeing profits of $150m/year, then anything over about $5 billion market cap is just out of line. There's not a whole lot of growth available to them short of changing their service so much that it becomes less attractive to Internet users. And if it's not about growth then I need to see dividends that make my investment worthwhile. If they have over about $5 billion market cap then I'd be better off investing in a savings account.
You seem to assume that their website is their only source of revenue. This is not the case. They provide a variety of products and services, including licensing their search engine code, selling search appliances, and more. Heck, it seems that Yahoo is using Google's engine now, and so are a lot of others, because it is the best. This is why they are going to grow in revenue like crazy! IANASB, YMMV.
I think not. These shares are indoubtably going through the roof, so they'll be way too expensive for me. I mean, Google is supposed to be worth about 15 - 20 billion!
Muahahaha. IT looks like they are pissing off the banks who wanted to make a killing off this fat IPO. Look at the jealousy!
"They could get a $100bn" stock market value, said one person involved.
"However, all the shares would end up with Aunt Agatha in Des Moines and Uncle Milt in Pittsburgh and there would be no real public market at all."
Okay, so they are mad the shares might actually get owned by ordinary people instead of investment brokerages/banks, and they dare to claim this means no *public* market? What is their definition of people? The same as Stalin's definition of People? (as in Enemy of the People, Property of the People, etc)...
Oh but the juiciest bit is who this comes from:
Frank Quattrone, the star investment banker who controlled many of the dotcom stock allocations, is awaiting the verdict in a trial that sprang out of the scandals.
He was accused of destroying evidence to hamper an investigation into the affair.
Google, do your IPO on ebay and really piss them off! Support the .com economy! :)
However, gravity is, in fact, a very important assistant in many pens. If you try writing on a vertical surface or on the underside of a horizontal surface, you will discover this pretty soon. A bubble will not usually form, but the ink-air interface moves back to a new potential minimum that is behind the ball. This is because, in a conventional pen, the full potential for the system includes the action of gravity on the column of ink as well as the action of the surface tension on the ink-air interface.
Writing upside-down is of course more strenuous than any writing you can do when in free fall. But it is really quite amusing for this ignorant fellow to claim that gravity is not an important factor when using a pen, when it obviously is.
Are you sure the phenomena you describe are not caused by gravity acting against the ink? IN other words, a ballpoint on earth will not write upside down because gravity pulls the ink away form the ball, not because gravity is no longer pulling the ink to the ball. The aforementioned astronaut seems to have proven your theory incorrect.
Sure thing.
First, as an example, look at any RIAA affiliated CD you own that has the lyric sheet. You will see "lyrics reprinted by permission" or some such. This is because the band is giving the record company permission to reprint the lyrics.
The reason they can give permission is because the band, not the record company, owns the lyrics. Not to mention the score, i.e. they own the song. Not the record company.
You'll also see things like "songs published by ", and that company you never heard of is actually a legal entity of some sort (maybe a partnership, maybe an actual corporation) that is made up of one or more members of the band.
The RIAA companies don't sign bands to give them songs, they sign them to recording contracts -- i.e., they pay the band for their recordings.
Now, the only thing stopping a band from re-recording those songs is that the record company may (probably does) have a clause that says "you can't release recordings through any other company or through yourself for the duration of this contract".
So if a band is in a 3 year deal, they're stuck with that company. If the company drops them, or their contract expires, while they may not have the rights to the original recordings, they have the rights to the songs, so nothing is stopping them from re-recording.
So... if a band signed to a RIAA company releases an album and it flops, and the company drops them, there is no reason they can't just re-record the songs and release the "new" album.
Sorry, but you are completely wrong. First off it is an oversimplification to expect all recording contracts to be the same. But ultimately, most of them indeed include a signing away of all rights for any songs produced, plus future songs, plus the artists name, and anything else Mr Record Executive can think of.
Artists have even been sued later for making songs that sounded like they were the same style as the kind of songs they used to sing for a record label.
Essentially, if you sign with a label, they own you, your soul, and everything you will ever be. If you are lucky, you might get a small advance with that. Most artists, of course are not even "lucky' enough to sign a record deal. But if they dare to distribute MP3's of their own work, not having signed a deal with any record label, the RIAA bots attack them and their fans and sue them into oblivion.
The Disney-inspired copyright laws and the RIAA/MPAA deathmarch, along with DRM, are an attack on the actual creators of content by middlemen who wish to continue to control the means of distribution and to reap the lion's share of the profits. They can't have the actual artists and the actual customers interacting in a way in which neither gets screwed, it would destroy their business model.
I understand where the confusion comes up - it's because most people get both car and driver insurance from the same company, under the same "policy". But they're really very, very different things.
But the poster was merely giving an example of the floor. Yes, liability insurance is not avoided no matter what. But that does not take care of the driver or the car if there is an accident.
By the time you get to that, the bill could be several times the aformentioned sum. And even if there was an accident, the insurance company will only give you at maximum a fraction of the "worth" of the car. So paying $2-3000 on insurance each year is insane on a $500 car. Is paying $1200 in liability coverage somehow less insane because you pay the same amount on any car and it is your Obligation as a Good Citizen? Hell no!
Firstly, I have found that even full coverage insurance is the same cost on a $40,000 car as it is on a $400 car. Of course it is absurd in the case of the latter. But even if we are only discussing liability we are talking about an outlay of cash for maintenance of the privilege of driving. If you can pay the sam eammount each month and drive a $40,000 car why are you driving the $400 car? Because you don't want to owe $40,000+interest? for many this is not compelling enough a reason.
In summary, the cost of liability insurance, the cost of the car, the cost of the gas, the cost of the maintenance and repairs all go into the calculation of how much this mode of transportation cost, and in many cases because of insurance costs it becomes insane to drive a "cheap" car.
Um they did offer such a tool to fix the problem easily but customers still didn't run it and just called to bitch about the popups even though they were told to run it but they still didn't do it. Damn lazy people.
It always amazed me but people will indeed call and wait on hold 30 minutes just to complain for another 15 about something that happened because they did not do the 5 second task they were assigned when they called the last time (or were otherwise notified about). What's even more outstanding is that they will do this again and again.
Even better are the people who complain about something wrong with a program, but there is a patch for the problem, but they don't install it. They will complain repeatedly that the program does not work right, and be told repeatedly that they need to apply the patch, and told how to apply the patch, but they will refuse to do it and yet want to complain more about the problem instead. Some people are just whiners!
Um, no. Business licenses in the US are mostly local (city) government things to gather some tax revenue.
I see you got your MBA in Community College. Let me give you a clue. City governments do not grant corporations. AOL is a corporation.
That said, no matter what the business type there are recourses wen they act illegally. Unfortunately in this country government turns a blind eye to the malfeasance of large corporations.
What you said about ISPs is correct, but not just anyone could set one up. It would require some technical knowlege and startup capital, but otherwise yes.
Would you prefer that it be described as a worm or a trojan? Take your pick, either can be justified. Now tell me why getting a worm (trojan) to run on your computer without telling you isn't hacking your computer.
In fact, isn't there currently a kid in jail for modifying the msblaster worm to fix the vulnerabilities it exploits? Even if not, the FBI is looking for that guy. Face it, if individua;s hack computers or pass out trojans and worms, it is a crime. But if a corporation does it, it's just business. :(
Excellent article!
;) ) and adding "eye candy" is an immediate hit.
:: gasp :: roleplay more.
However I feel the original author left out one important part of a MMORPGs "hook" to me:
Exploration
If I really am "entering a world" I want to feel like I am. I felt that way in early EQ. And to those who have posted, "How different can a graphical MUD be from one that isn't graphical?" The answer is much different, we are largely visual people (come on guys, you know that is true
What's even better is adding eye candy that is an intriguing landscape, where you can feel like you are possibly the first person ever to have come to this exact corner, to see this exact view. That is an easy hit MMORPGs can give us.
Exploring a world without having to slay Dragon 1 2 and 3 just to enter the area, is also something a casual player can do. Perhaps I'm biased because I do things like this in real life, but I was thrilled to appear to be able to ascend the "mountains" in DAoC instead of hitting my head on the "world's ceiling" as in EQ.
Give me the mountains, the tiny little nooks in caves in which I find a quiet rest spot, and I'll go there to take a break from the leveling grind, perhaps it might even entice people to
If you'd like to see my take on the MMORPGs I saw at this year's E3, see my article: Building a Better Mousetrap.
I have to agree with you. I think one of the main reasons I started playing Everquest and later DAOC was the scenery and music. In both games I enjoyed travelling the landscape even at low levels much more than fighting. It was also a challenge to go through areas where fighting would get you killed just to see something cool. I was recently trying to get a beginning character to stonehenge in daoc (which, for the uninitiated, is a high-level dungeon in the daoc world with high-level monsters roaming and guarding the whole Salisbury Plain). And who could forget the Naked Gnome race on everquest where the challenge was to create a new Gnome character and with no armor or weapons race from one end of the world (where gnomes live) to the other? That was a neat idea and very inspirational to me.
I find it is very interesting how people act in these games compared to real life. I enjoy scenery in real life and would love to climb mountains. But most of the people in the game are just concerned with levelling. I was playing with a friend and I was telling him "check out that sunset!" But he was more concerned with his experience bar! :P
It sounds like this guy doesn't like MMORPGs. Why does he keep playing them?
'Doctor! It hurts when I do this!'
'Well don't do that.'
Sheesh. Play something else.
Because he likes RPGs, SCIFi, Fantasy, and computer games, that is why. You would think a MMORPG would be the answer to such a person's prayers, but it is not. You know, I think a major reason this doens't work as well is that most adventure games normally have a good solid story, but most MORPGs do not. Paper and dice RPGs rely on a GM who creates a decent story and interaction with likable humans (likable by *you* the RPG player). Successful MUDs have historically had elements of both (and even when the stories sucked, people came back if they wanted to talk to others who were in that game).
Actually, I have noticed that DAOC is soliciting suggestions from players both for quests and for game development. There is a very good line of communication between the developers and the players because they know it is about the community. We will see how things work out for them. Then again, the problems of the levelling system are definitely there.
Dear God, you lead a charmed life. Any tips on finding career paths like that? I'm sure a lot of OSS advocates want to know.
I do not know a single open source developer who has had trouble finding work even in the previous bad economy. I do know plenty of admin and support types having problems. I know a lot of open source developers and they are actually in good demand to work with the products they like; the poster's career path actually sounded pretty typical to me.
Right now OSS is in its main stream infancy. It's all roses and love and happiness.
That is likewise a myth. Software began as open source and was shared. It is proprietary software that is the new model, and companies are switching back to open source because of the problems inherent in that model. Even in proprietary software, code sharing occurs at some level between areas of companies, companies collaborating, and even customers, and it is known that this is a good thing and why by anyone who actually works on the software.
The more the code is shared, the more bugs can be fixed. The more bugs are fixed, the better the software becomes. It is that simple. Having multiple repositories as is the case with backups and escrow with proprietary software or the normal course of doing business with open source software, is likewise good because you have methods for disaster recovery. This article describes a case where the need for such methods was blindingly, painfully obvious.
the only things he excelled in was comedies, but he tried only for serious roles. Robin Williams almost suffered the same fate until someone told him he was much to funny for the serious roles.
Yeah, but lately he has been in a lot more dramas and horror flicks.... I guess some people never learn! :)
I'm sorry, but I refuse to recognize that politicians are just people. They are reptiles in humanoid form, perhaps.
This isn't meant to be taken seriously, of course, politicians are just not deserving of much respect in my book.
Which is why I think the new television show Skin has such an awesome premise (don't know that it will be any good, unfortunately). Politician's son dates pornographer's daughter, and each of the dads is trying to break up the relationship on the premise that the other dad is too much of a slimeball to be associated with! :)
No, it was Digital Equipment Corp. Windows NT is based on VMS. Digital was bought by Compaq which was in turn bought by HP. David Cutler, the chief architect of VMS, was hired by Microsoft to help develop NT.
BTW, WNT is to VMS what IBM is to HAL.
This is true in that, according to Microsoft History, they hired away DEC's development team for VMS and asked them to make NT for them, starting with the lead developer and then telling him he had full control over who was in his team and what they were doing so long as he comes out with a new OS. But perhaps the other poster was referring to the OS2 debacle.
Microsoft was working with IBM on OS/2 wen they started working on NT. They ended up abruptly ditching the project and then attacking OS/2 in the marketplace. A lot of the OS/2 technology that was developed in the joint project between Microsoft and IBM ended up in Windows NT and IIRC the Win95 line as well (and of course by extension of NT, it is in 2000 and XP).
It was similar to the Monterrey project SCO is whining about, except that in this case MS was being quite a bit nastier. I think SCo was trying to make the comparison between OS/2 vs NT and UNIX vs Linux. At any rate apparently Microsoft felt their half was their property and they could use it, and as far as I know IBM chose to fight them in the marketplace instead of in court. The rest, as they say, is history.
And so, here we are. But I assure you, if IBM were to capitulate and offer SCO the buyout, SCO would take it, because a buyout is what they've wanted all along..
Darl has claimed publicly that a buyout is no longer an option, but then he has claimed a lot of things publicly I hear :)...
In a court of law - it's called perjury. You lie, or you tell something that is opposite of what you said you'd say under oath, and you go to jail.
You can't lie even when you're marketing. There's something called 'truth in advertising' as well
You don't see very many commercials, do you? Face it, there is no truth in advertising.
"so who do you think is going to be the first to jump at declaring it a hoax?"
I vote for the Iraqi Information Minister...
There are no Chinese in space. Never! --Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
I've never understood why all of the normal foreign films, like all the french ones, are sub-titled, and people here love it, yet for some reason they always insist on dubbing the anime. Now, the vast majority of SERIOUS anime fans (myself included) HATE dubs, and refuse to collect anything but sub-titled anime. I wonder why they refuse to sub-title the good stuff, especially Porco Rosso, which is quite an excellent movie. Just once I'd love for them to do a good sub-titling job, and release it in the states, and have it be wildly successful to show that people really do enjoy the subs. Oh well, least I still have my fansubs and I won't have to deal with all this dubbing nonsense.
I hate dubbing as well, mainly because they pick terrible voice actors for the parts. Now Patrick Stewart is no slouch for voice acting, and all slashdotters love Natalie Portman, but for me there is no substitute for the real thing when it comes to foreign films, especially Japanese ones.
I wish that more Japanese video games retained the voicing as well. It is frustrating because usually if you want to hear the original Japanese, you have to get the Japanese version which is of course not subtitled and uses Japanese menus.
I was recently playing the US PS2 version of "Way of the Samurai" and I noticed that they had retained the grunts and cries of the original voice actors, but the speech was mute (there was text). I thought it was awfully tantalizing to have all those Japanese voice actors but only be able to hear the emphatics. It wuld have been nice to have them actually speaking.
Tenchu 2 (or was it 3) finally caught onto this and allowed the speech to be configured seperately from the subtitling. That is especially good because Tenchu's US speech was terrible, even featuring stereotypical broken english speaking characters for extra infamy! :P
Did you somehow not even RTF summary and notice the bit where it says not to bother posting exactly what you said?
First off, slashdotters as a rule do not rtfa or even the whole submission. They don't click on links other than the headlines and reply, generally, an dthat includes article links.
Secondly, how dare they declare a tired old obscure nerdy joke vernoten on slashdot! What are they going to do? Seize our boxen?! I'll have you know that in Soviet Russia, all your first post penis bird natalie portman are belong to us, and they're worried about nausican stabbings?
???
Profit!
People who use F*ck as every fourth word in their diatribe however, are quite welcome I take it?
You can lead the way out the door.
You haven't read the fucking Linux source code have you? :)